A Journey for Life with the Zapatistas in Slumil K´Ajxemk´op

This presentation makes a re-cap of La Gira por la Vida of the Zapatistas troughout the insurrectionary Europe and particularly in the Netherlands.

The Coordination Group of La Gira Holanda wants to further the messages that the Zapatistas shared during their visits: that our struggles, wether they are for land, housing, or against gender discrimination or colonialism, each in their own geographies, calendars, and differences are against the same enemy- the capitalist hydra.

EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) is a movement of radical hope for the possibility to build a world where many worlds coexist. Such a movement began beyond the nation state narratives, sprouted from ancestral memories from the collective dreams of the communities in the mountains of Chiapas, Southeast of what we now call Mexico. These communities are Mayan, Tojolabal, Tzotzil, Tzetal, Chol and Mam, people who have not yet forgotten Earth-knowledges, who are preserving their ancestral memories against the oblivion of the current Neo-Liberal Capitalist system. They had first raised their voice publicly in January 1994, and ever since has been a great inspiration for pursuing an alternative relation to the Earth as re-existence in autonomy and in defence for Life.

Since the announcement of Zapatista's “La Gira por La Vida” (Journey for Life) in October 2020, numerous organizations throughout the "Slumil K´Ajxemk´Op" (The Other Europe) have established contact and united in order to receive the group in their journey. Several working groups were created and, as a result, a beautiful and extensive solidarity network with supporters from all different backgrounds, social movements, identities, social classes, languages, and roots was created and keeps growing.

In April 2021, a group of 7 Zapatista compas left Mexico and set sail (literally) to Spain, 500 years after the supposed conquest of the “New World”. Consecutively, a delegation of more than 170 members arrived in Vienna in September and started their Journey for Life throughout Slumil K´Ajxemk´Op until December. They came to share their struggles with us and to listen to ours. Together, we weave dialogues and share experiences of radical practices on building other possible worlds, and imagining pluriversal futures.

La Gira Holanda (the volunteer group) prepared to welcome 11 compas in the Netherlands for four weeks in October and November. The compas visited and met with different collectives, groups, organizations and individuals in The Netherlands, such as initiatives on climate movement, farms' struggles, squat movement, land and housing right, undocumented migrant workers, anarchist groups, feminist collectives, artists with social practice, students and many more grassroot initiatives, with whom they collectively seed resistance and harvest rebelion.